God’s Purposes in Our Sufferings
November 17, 2009
Suffering is one of the prominent features in the landscape of the New Testament that our American sensibilities find repulsive. Perhaps it is more a human than cultural problem, but the last year of economic disaster has unveiled the extreme to which we are addicted to comfort and stability. Yet the simple reality permeates the pages of the New Testament: if you follow a suffering Savior through a broken world, you will suffer.
Our most natural response to this is to ask, “Why?” Dozens of Psalms affirm the appropriateness of such an inquiry. In the moment, suffering makes little sense. We are blinded to any point of purpose. And while we often never have any divine purpose unveiled to us, we need not question whether God purposes suffering. The greatest event in human history-the crucifixion of Jesus-was intended by God from before the foundation of the world. Certainly similar purpose might lay behind the physical, emotional, and relational sufferings of those whom Christ redeemed.
This is how the apostle Paul understood his own sufferings. He experienced such afflictions that he could say, “We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9). Looking back at this intense suffering, Paul could draw two clear purposes-one vertical, one horizontal. Concerning his relationship with God, Paul concluded that this “sentence of death…was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9).
Concerning his relationship with others, Paul had little doubt that God designed his afflictions to deepen his ability to minister to others. “For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer” (2 Corinthians 1:5-6).
This biblical dynamic is captured poignantly in a short play by Thornton Wilder entitled, “The Angel that Troubled the Waters.” The setting is the “Bethesda pool” from John 5 where, according to some New Testament manuscripts, an angel would occasionally stir the water so that the next person who stepped into the pool would be healed. In Wilder’s story, a doctor suffering from depression goes to the pool amongst the physically crippled. When the angel appears to stir the waters, the doctor eagerly moves toward the pool, only to be told by the angel, “healing is not for you.” When the doctor pleads his case of how much more effective he could be if set free from his dark emotions, the angel replies:
“Without your wound where would your power be? It is your very remorse that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In Love’s service only the wounded soldiers can serve. Draw back.”
If you are in the midst of sufferings, would you open your heart to God’s purposes? Would you cling to him who raises the dead? Would you ask him for comfort and for a community of sufferers to share that comfort with?
Following our suffering Savior with you,
Pastor Chris